Vroom: Are you helping to motivate your team?

Motivating team members is a challenge all managers and leaders ponder upon from time to time. What more can I do motivate my team?

One theory that may be of interest is the Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory. Victor was born in 1923 his theory is that people put more effort into their work when they can see a link between performance, effort and rewards.

We are big fans here of being really honest with the team about the performance of the business. Team members appreciate receiving communication about the company performance and therefore can create a link between their efforts and how they make a difference.

Victor felt that for you to be motivated to increase your performance you need to believe that:

1. Increased effort will lead to increased performance.
2. I will get a reward if I do better.
3. Whatever I get as a result of this is something that I value.

This last one can be tricky. Gifts to reward performance improvements can be judged, bonuses are subject to tax and NI and praise can make people feel uncomfortable.

We recommend that managers use objective setting/Key Performance Indicators to measure their team members performance and that they reward for an individual’s performance as well as team/company performance where possible.

Therefore managers need to:

1. Know what the available rewards are. If they don’t exist give time to think about how it can be given as rewards.
2. Make sure they know what is important to each individual. Knowing your people is an essential skill of a manager.
3. Give rewards when performance improves, not just for showing up.
4. Make sure people have the resources, tools, and training available to them to improve their performance. Hold people to account, do regular 121’s, Supervision and Performance reviews.